Salem's 'Which' Trials
by Konstantinsen
Summary: Salem vexedly explains to one of her devoted followers why the Grimm do not have certain important anatomical parts that humans or faunus do. [one-shot]


Salem was whittling away her time in her tower in the heart of the accursed Grimm Lands when her scry ascended to her quarters with news of her 'most devoted disciple' returning from a successful mission in her name. Perhaps today would not be as dull as she thought. Her fool of a minion was too engrossed in his own deluded fantasy of 'divine service to the eternal Queen' to exercise his mental faculties against simple, honeyed words.

The Great Witch descended the spiral staircase down to the gathering hall where her fanatical servant stood in giddy excitement.

"My Queen! Thy servant hast delivered on thy request," prattled the wide-eyed acolyte. "Not a single stone stands of that wretched fortress and thy beasts have descended upon the heathens still resisting against thy word. Have I done well to please you?"

Salem was a thousand-years too old for rolling her eyes in annoyance. She settled for a curt response that always worked on these idiots. "You have."

The acolyte rejoiced. He threw his hands in the air and pranced about shouting praises to her. Such adorations had ceased to be flattering a thousand years ago. For the sake of exploiting more of his usefulness, she let him go about his rituals. At least he reined himself in when he let loose.

She was about to dismiss him when he fell prostate before her. "My Queen!"

"Yes?"

"I pray that thou may humor thy servant for his inquiries."

Ask your questions and begone, you useful pest. "Ask."

"My Queen...why doth thy beasts, great and mighty, sport no genitalia?"

Salem blinked.

Her acolyte raised his head from the floor, his bloodshot eyes radiating with pure, morbid curiosity. "If thou alloweth me to continue my query..."

She gestured at him to do so. Mainly because she was still dumbfounded by what she had heard him say.

"With thy beasts being birthed in the pools of the abyss abundant here in thine kingdom, shouldst it be of sounder tactical application to grant thy rabid warriors the phallic gift to enable them to reproduce their ilk far from their origins? Therefore eliminating the incessant need to spawn forth a pool in a place where it wouldst be of greatest surety filled up by the nearest heathen."

Salem blinked again. She stood there, staring at the man ramble on.

"Thy wolves will breed wolves, thy avians breed avians...hence, shouldst thou grant thy minions the majestic ability of carnal union—"

Her eye twitched.

'Carnal union.'

Gods, it was the Cult of the Fertile Grimm all over again. She thought she had destroyed every single trace of that damned fanatical group of freaks. Alas, the remnants have slipped through the cracks and continued to pollute the minds of many...including her own tools. Her acolyte here probably unearthed a tome somewhere that had survived her purges and was so enthralled by what he perceived to be a useful tactic.

"...then, shoulst the wolves and the apes copulate in glorious three-way with the avians, they may birth a beast of such might and speed that they carry with them thy power to..."

Salem held up her hand and the man stopped rambling like an obedient child. She gestured to one of the empty seats. "Sit."

He sat. All eyes and ears. And then probably his own heart if he was insane enough to carve it out of his own chest and offer it to her, still beating, before he died.

"Pay attention," she ordered. "Long ago, I claimed these lands to begin the new era..."

* * *

Salem found it easy to cow the near endless hordes of shadowy beasts that the blasted God of Darkness had left behind. She needed to flex her powers, making short work of the lot of them, and the many mindless animals quickly came to accept her authority. They were masterless with the shattering of the moon by their creator and thus they roamed and did as they pleased with impunity.

No longer. They were hers now. Her beasts. Her army. Unquestioning, expendable, replaceable in the droves. They were born form the pools of blackness that had transformed her completely and they obeyed without question as tamed animals are to do.

As she stood on the outcrop of the jagged rocks that towered over her endless horde, she came to a bitter-tasting revelation.

"These...are the ugliest creatures I've ever seen."

Salem scowled in disgust as she conducted what would have amounted to a parade review of her 'troops.' In this case, rows upon rows of sniffing, sniveling, starved wolves. And almost nothing else. Sure there were these massive avian giants squawking overhead but there was no other creature that differed between them.

"Uncreative bastard," she mouthed into her palm.

No wonder the God of Darkness was so insecure. His brother, the God of Light, was far more creative.

Like, really?

Wolves? Was that all he could come up with? Wolves and overgrown corvids? Come on!

If the Divine Brothers had indeed collaborated to create humanity, she surmised that the God of Light had to create women to balance out the men. For lack of a better insult, the God of Darkness was the bigger dick between the two of them.

Salem cracked her knuckles and felt the wisps of her corrupted powers sparking at the end of her fingertips. Perhaps, she could come up with something better. More terrifying, more powerful, more savvy at least.

And so began her first trials.

* * *

"Ah, the ancient Witch Trials!" cried the acolyte in great reverie. "I have had faith in their truths! Such events indeed has transpired. They were no myth!"

Salem tried not to sigh. The truth of the matter was that the truth was filtered through generations of oral history so much so that whatever murky quagmire emerged was considered true by those who studied the past. Alas, better to humor him than to indulge in his ignorant stupidity.

"Yes. The ancient 'Which' Trials..."

* * *

Her first round of experiments did well...for about a century. By then, the first organized communes were becoming more formidable than she had anticipated. These mortals were arming themselves well and were beginning to relearn the greater things they had forgotten. The arts of war were still the same and they adapted easily to what came naturally.

Her wolves always attacked in packs, at most in stampeding hordes, and thus were predictable. Her avians were rendered inefficient in the more rugged, mountainous terrain where the bulk of these pitiful mortals expertly sheltered themselves in. And the fruits of her labor—the vaunted Ursai...

...they were an utter failure.

Hence after pacing in the ruins of her citadel, Salem approached the blackened pools of Grimm and began conjuring a new breed of monster. Hopefully one that would be more effective than her previous breed.

Given that it her initial attempts had yielded her several varieties of Ursai, she made sure to narrow down her scope to more specific Grimm for more specific tasks. At least this time around, she had little to choose from when it came to the final products...

* * *

"And thus the magnificent Goliaths were birthed upon the world," her disciple cheered.

Salem nodded. She still held an ounce of pride for those massive, lumbering hunks of psychological terror and that was one reason why she still kept them around. For their size alone, they had terrorized the smaller settlements, even going so far as to trample them to the ground...

That was until the mortals learned how to exploit their ability of mobility. Damn horses. Since then, the Goliath became more of a legacy piece on the mantle.

"They were a product of the second 'Which' Trials," she said. Gods, how she wished she used a better name than 'Which Trials' because that sounded very moronic. Then again, she did spend most of her time choosing which one to field and which ones to throw back into the Grimm pools for remolding.

She could hear the man get giddy with excitement. Gods, what a loon. Why again did she still keep him around?

* * *

Salem growled at the humiliating destruction of her Goliaths. The four-legged leviathans were outwitted by these primitive pests. The first line breaks and already her horde is in retreat, trampling over the lesser beasts following after them. Beowolves, Ursai, and even the aged Nevermores were falling back in disorganized array, the rest either scampering to the wilds or being exterminated by the survivors.

Perhaps she needed to be more surgical about this. With the populations rising and the races growing in power and sophistication, she turned to her pools once more to raise a new creature.

It took a full week but after the monotonous trial-and-error and rounds of exhaustive scrutiny of her experiments, she had churned out a variety of results, each playing to their strengths and countering each other's weaknesses. Now she had to choose which ones to field and which ones to toss back into the tar pits.

As she marched past the line of her creations, she noticed one glaring detail. One that she had, for hundreds of years, neglected to consider out of the fact that such a detail was irrelevant. And in poor taste. And because it reminded her of the cruelty of the Divine Brothers...especially the younger one.

But Salem considered herself better and smarter than before and immune to such pettiness. She overruled her initial judgments and proceeded to grant her minions, the creatures of Grimm, the ability to reproduce. To copulate far from her pools and increase in number. Thus enabling them to nest and carve out their niches from which to enforce her rule among her enemies.

As off-putting as the concept of Grimm copulation was to her, at least she would not be there to witness the act. As long as her beasts were keeping their numbers stable without her direct intervention, then she could live with the Grimm having overextended phalluses and cavernous ovaries.

* * *

"Ah!" thumped her manic servant. "Thou hast already done so! Pray tell thy faithful servant, why hast thou reneged on such an advantage?"

Because it was freaky, you indolent fool! Salem could see now that keeping this man was a mistake. She hoped his fascination for Grimm breeding was a passing hobby and not a discreet passion that slipped through her screening scries.

"In your studies, have you encountered records of any cults dating from these periods?" she asked him.

He fidgeted a little before answering, "Yes, my Queen. I believe I have gathered details of an obscure group who believeth with great zeal in the union between mortal flesh and the shadows of thy minions."

Salem sighed quietly. Of course, he did. Damn that disgusting Cult of the Fertile Grimm and their uncanny ability to record everything as graphically as possible on the most resistant lasting parchment ever crafted.

Hence her Third 'Which' Trials to the purge the group and sort out which ones deserved the most heinous, torturous punishment.

* * *

Salem had never been so disgusted up to this point in her whole cursed eternal life. Through the unmistakeable eye of her scry, she bore witness to a man fornicating with a living Beowolf tied to a stone altar.

She had to wipe her eyes for this one.

Yes, that was indeed a Grimm being sodomized on a rock by a mortal man in a loincloth. And yes, there was more. Even more.

When she had given her beasts genitalia, she had not entirely expected something like this. Particularly, she did not expect something like this on a large scale. Sure, there would be isolated incidents where the animalistic side of a Grimm would take over and instead of gutting the sorry sod, the victim would be at the mercy of an accursed shaft bloodily defiling their nether regions with uncaring vigor. As for the other way around...

"They call themselves the 'Cult of the Fertile Grimm,'" informed one of her more intelligent pawns.

"They could be useful," suggested another.

Salem glanced at her circle. A motley crew of disillusioned yet highly capable mortals—defrocked scribes, disgraced knights, and disenfranchised pundits—willing to accept her rule in exchange for the fulfillment of their desires. And even they all agreed to having this cult practice its...rituals. Why?

Potential.

Yeah. Salem had limits, too. And this was just too much.

"If I may, madame," proposed a third member, "they can act as a buffer against inquisitors or perhaps even a military arm to act on our behalf."

Okay. Maybe. For the time being, Salem decided to spare the cult her wrath. As long as her scry would spare her any more images of men and women—self-proclaimed 'priests,' 'nuns', and 'monks'—pleasuring themselves with Grimm of all shapes and sizes...

...yes, even the Geists and the Apathy.

How they managed to enslave and pleasure themselves with such Grimm was beyond her. All the more reason to erase these mortals for good later on down the line.

* * *

The man was silent. He was staring at her. Waiting for the next part in her saga of the 'Which' Trials.

"The final of the Trials I hosted not too long after," Salem said, feeling her fingers hum with magical energy.

* * *

Salem could not believe what she was seeing. This was either the dumbest idea she had or the best depending on the outcome. The rejects were lined up on the ground, dying or dissipated.

With baited breath, the final variant emerged from the blackened Grimm pool. Head covered in twisted jutting ivory, skin blackened darker than tar, varicose veins pulsing bright and uneven claws sharpened by the corruptive powers of the murky waters. The Grimmified human roared hoarsely then fell on its knees before her.

It was naked and muscly. The right amount of strong and intimidating. Salem commanded it to stand and it did so. And the trunk she saw swaying between its legs made her want to vaporize it on the spot.

Was this some cruel joke from the Divine Brothers from far, far away? It wasn't even funny anymore!

Salem was irked to a great degree by what had become of the high priest of the Cult of the Fertile Grimm. Of course, the man who commanded these loons just had to have the biggest pecker of them all. And the pools, despite her growing power over them, were undiscriminating in what exact anatomical part of the body to corrupt.

She squinted and took a closer look. "Are you...are you dripping from there?"

Indeed he was. The Grimmified cultist grunted while the black, flowing eel swaying between his legs indiscriminately spurted out near endless droplets of...could that even be called ejaculate?

Salem backed away and raised her hand to destroy her creation when said creation glanced to the failed Grimmified humans lying writhing on the ground. It took less than a moment and the wind graced Salem's face before she turned to her side to witness in full unadulterated glory the corrupted human indulging at once the crimes of necrophilia, bestiality, and perhaps pedophilia...with a side of incest.

She snapped both her fingers and the final of the 'Which' Trials ended most spectacularly.

* * *

"Now you understand why such things must never be added to the Grimm," she concluded.

The acolyte sat in deep thought. He was silent and contemplating.

Salem raised her brow. In the year that she had had this pawn lapping at her heels, never had she seen him this deep in thought. Perhaps there was more to him than his insanity. Then he opened his mouth. She spoke too soon.

"My Queen...dost thou consider restoring unto thy minions the gift of carnal union?"

If Salem still had a mortal vein pulsing in her head, it would have already popped.

"We have advanced in technology and theory. Our bodies have adapted better. Thine servants are now more capable of greater things in thy name. Carnal union with the dark beasts may yield unto us better things than the failures of the past..."

"We could host another 'Which' Trial," the Great Witch mused.

The man lit up. "Of course, my Queen! Thy servant is greatly honored and willing to carry out the first of the Fourth Witch Trials!"

"Yes, the Fourth 'Which' Trials," Salem hummed. "Which one should I destroy? You or the idiots who gave you that idea."

"Wha—wait! No, my Quee—"

Salem snapped her fingers and the ground opened up. Dozens of tiny Grimm hands reached forth and tore him to pieces on the spot.

* * *

When her new circle had assembled and dispensed with the occasional introductory banter, Salem made her presence known to commence the meeting.

Before any agenda was to be discussed, she laid down her rules. Her law. Her stipulations and the code of ethics befitting those in service to her. She turned from face to face. From the fanatic that was Tyrian Callows to the megalomaniac going by the name of Cinder Fall. From the scientifically brilliant Arthur Watts to the imposing giant Hazel Rainart. They were all in agreement. Good.

And one more thing, an addendum to her house rules. She had recognized the same manic insanity in Tyrian and already knew what to expect.

"No, Tyrian. There will be no revival of the Cult."

Tyrian made a noise akin to a puppy kicked to the curb. But he shrugged and continued, faithful in the better plans of his 'goddess.' On the other flank of the table, Watts and Rainart let out a sigh of relief.

"What cult?" Cinder asked.

Watts, a dilettante of history, cautiously adjusted his collar. Rainart tried his best to remain impassive.

Salem made to inform Cinder of the Cult. Then decided against it. She had seen through scry the many acts of too many uncultured mortals. Even after she had ripped the gonads off of every Grimm in existence, the most desperate would literally drill holes and come up with disgustingly creative ways to pleasure themselves with her minions.

Over the past century, she had witnessed Beringels forcibly tamed for someone's pleasure. And not to mention how other mortals, driven mad for the need for release, saw some pragmatism in forcibly copulating with Apathy to counter its effects on their psyche.

Sick, twisted mortal loons.

Salem exhaled. "Cinder, such things are to remain in the past."

Cinder opened her mouth to ask why but quickly understood the look the Great Witch was leveling at her. The only woman in her circle clammed up and obediently sat silent unless she was broached.

For the unnumbered time, Salem wished Ozma would be suffering the same conundrum. She relished momentarily in the hopeful thought that the damn wizard was writhing in the mental disgust of mortals forcing themselves upon Grimm...

Then again, as her mind would argue from time to time, Ozma did copulate with a Grimm..._ified_ person...by the name of Salem. Four times. And more.

Ugh. At least she could prove that pasty white skin, twisted blackened veins, and deep charcoal eyes were attractive to certain people...

* * *

**ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: September 22, 2019**

**LAST EDITED: September 26, 2019**

**INITIALLY UPLOADED: September 26, 2019**

**NOTE: Inspired by a bit we had on the Discord about Salem inheriting the Grimm and reforming them with genitalia or something.**


End file.
